First Things RSS Feed - Eleanor Bourg Donlon https://www.firstthings.com/author/eleanor-bourg-donlon en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:55:00 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/eleanor-bourg-donlon 60 At Home with Dickens https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/01/at-home-with-dickens https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/01/at-home-with-dickens Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 From Disney movies to the most recent bestseller, children are born to escape the confines of familial failure. No hero is worth his salt unless and until he casts off the shackles of parental mismanagement. Or so we are often told.

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]]> Hard Times for Great Books https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/09/hard-times-for-great-books https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/09/hard-times-for-great-books Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400 In November 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts published a report titled To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence . Building on its earlier research, in Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004), the 2007 report provided, in the words of NEA chairman Dana Gioia, “a reliable and comprehensive overview of American reading today.” Its findings are devastating. Teenagers are increasingly tossing aside books for other activities and a startling percentage of young adults (nearly 60 percent) don’t bother to pick the books up in the first place.

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